Highlights of October's Combined ITS Conference, IV Symposium
IVsource.net
16 October 2000

The IEEE held its annual ITS technical bash October 1-5 in Dearborn, Michigan, in conjunction with the IV Symposium ... and the two overlapping conferences drew over 200 leading researchers and vehicle product developers from around the world.  The state of the research presented here is an excellent indicator of the favored approaches to the advanced driver assistance systems of tomorrow.

University professors and graduate students mingled with seasoned vehicle systems development engineers from the likes of DaimlerChrysler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Renault, Volvo, Bosch, Continental Teves, IBEO Lasertechnik, TNO Automotive, Siemens Automotive, Hitachi, Daihatsu, Hyundai, OMRON, and Mitsubishi.    The meeting was chaired by Dr. Jim Rillings of General Motors, with Dr. Alberto Broggi of the University of Parma and Dr. Ichiro Masaki of MIT as program chair and advisory chair, respectively.

See the IVsource Reading Room for the Richard Bishop presentation from IVS2000 entitled Survey of Intelligent Vehicle Applications Worldwide  

Across the two conferences, approximately 150 presentations were made in the area of intelligent vehicles.  IVS2000 in particular is popular as a meeting ground between university research institutes and the vehicle industry.  An ancillary thread is work in autonomous military vehicles.  Whereas in past years much of the research presented was on the challenges of detecting forward obstacles for vehicular radar systems, a new set of topics now dominate as radar systems have become relatively mature.  (There's still plenty of work to do on radar systems, but more from a manufacturing and performance enhancement perspective, rather than academic research -- Ed.)

A look at the areas of emphasis provides an excellent sense for where the technology is headed, and a look at who presented what provides a feel for where the industry is going.  But first, the numbers ...

A Technology Tally ...

• Vision -- There were about 30 papers dealing with machine vision.  Of these, about half focused on stereo vision techniques.  11 dealt with road following / lateral control and 11 addressed obstacle/vehicle detection. 

• Radar -- Only five papers were specifically radar focused, indicating that this area is fairly mature.

• Laser Scanners -- At least seven papers addressed the use of laser scanners, which are likely to be very powerful tools in next generation driver assistance systems.  Right now, they are relatively costly.

• Sensor Fusion -- Sixteen papers reported on performance achieved with sensor fusion, primarily radar and vision. 

... and a Functional Focus

Sliced another way, presenters and authors examined, for the most part, just four popular subject areas:

• Lane/Road Following & Lateral Control:  Fourteen papers presented, mostly for the freeway application.  One focused on urban streets.

• Obstacle Detection:  Nineteen papers focused in this area.

• Pedestrian Detection and Tracking:  Four papers.

• Fully Autonomous Vehicle Operation:  Eighteen papers focused on this area, both from auto companies and  academics.

Vehicle Players Active in Europe, Asia

In terms of work presented, the stars come from Europe and Asia.  Developments deep in the automotive technology labs which were not chosen for presentation would doubtless be very interesting.  Nevertheless, some fascinating items are emerging.  DaimlerChrysler researchers offered an array of new capabilities, which focused on fusing vision and radar for improved lane assignment in  ACC systems, lane recognition and optimum path planning in complex urban street environments, lane change assistant (by looking backwards to track oncoming vehicles), autonomous stop-n-go, and enhancing digital maps using vehicle probes. 

Volkswagen presented their robot driver, which is used to drive production vehicles for vehicle dynamics and durability testing.  Renault provided their thoughts on the use of vehicle navigation and digital maps in driver assistance systems.  Fiat is evaluating driver assistance using far infrared displays in adverse weather.

From the Far East, Toyota presented their Intelligent Multimode Transit System, consisting of fully automated buses operating in platoons (using radar, communications, vision, and magnetic guidance) (see IVsource archives for related article).  Honda offered the latest on their Advanced Safety Vehicle, which incorporates lane keeping, night vision, active headlamps, inter-vehicle communication, pedestrian detection, and assessment of driver workload through measuring vital signs.  Hyundai, like Volkswagen, is using automation for durability testing.   And, as reported in a separate article, Hitachi unveiled their next generation ACC radar at the conference, which was developed in a partnership with EatonVORAD.  The unit offers improved performance for current systems -- and appears to be up to the task of low speed ACC as well.

Nuggets

Other promising innovations presented include an approach by Koyo Seiko Co. and Sumitomo to enhance vehicle stability control using steer-by-wire -- a purported improvement over the direct yaw-moment control method.  A "Virtual Mirror for Driver Assistance" was presented by a University of  Minnesota researcher as an intuitive driver aid for large commercial vehicles -- here, sensors detect objects in vehicle rear and side blind spots and "paint" images/icons onto side mirrors.  Further, it is possible to create a virtual mirror much larger than would be practical for a physical mirror.  Another system called BASIL, developed at the University of Haute Alsace, France, assesses a  driver's attention placement and skill level, for research in vehicle systems and driver performance.

From a quite different -- thought very important -- angle came an analysis by the University of Southern California claiming definite and beneficial effects of ACC in an emissions/fuel economy study.

Government activities were presented by the Japanese National Police Agency, which is working on Intersection Collision Avoidance, and the Dutch Ministry of Transport.  Edwin Bastiaensen of the Dutch AVV within the Transportation Ministry reported that the AVV is planning pilots of Lane Departure Warning Systems, autonomous speed assistant, and external speed assistant -- focusing on both safety and enhancements to road throughput.

A paper from the University of Sao Paulo proposed an Automated Flexible Transit System, an approach to automated bus transit, that makes extensive use of platoons to handle passenger volumes in high ridership cities such as Sao Paulo. 

Future Waves

Based on the above numbers, content of the papers, hallway discussions, and general industry knowledge, your ever-ready-with-an-opinion publisher offers his sense for future "waves" of functionality and the supporting technologies in the table.    The "Current Generation" is on the market; "Next Generation" is in advanced product development; "Next +1" generation has been successfully prototyped and is being tested and refined within automotive labs; "Next +2" is in experimental stages in more of a research environment.

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Volkswagen's car-driving robot at the wheel

... contact IEEE to obtain full proceedings of the Conference and the Symposium:  www.ieee.org.

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